Counseling the Counselor
by Tiffany Park
Summary: Kirk discovers why McCoy had such accurate insight into Doctor Daystrom's breakdown.
1. Chapter 1:  Headers and Disclaimers

TITLE: Counseling the Counselor

AUTHOR: Tiffany Park

STATUS: Complete

CATEGORY: Missing Scene

SPOILERS: The Ultimate Computer

SEASON: Season Two

PAIRINGS: None.

RATING: PG

CONTENT WARNINGS: mild language

SUMMARY: Kirk discovers why McCoy had such accurate insight into Doctor Daystrom's breakdown.

ARCHIVE: Please ask.

DISCLAIMER: Star Trek and its characters are the property of Paramount. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. (Like any money could ever conceivably be made with this tripe!) No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. This story may not be posted elsewhere without the consent of the author.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: In the Voyager episode "Lifesigns," the EMH mentioned that McCoy developed his neural grafting technique in the year 2253. I always considered that date to be a writer's goof. In my opinion, it made far more sense for McCoy to have developed the technique after the TOS episode "Spock's Brain", rather than some fifteen years earlier. Although, I suppose it could help explain why McCoy didn't manage to kill Spock after the Teacher's training wore off. Anyhow, out of such incongruities fanfic is made.


	2. Chapter 2

**Counseling the Counselor**

**by**

**Tiffany Park**

"Bones sure had him nailed," Kirk said to Spock as they walked out of the transporter room. They had just seen McCoy off as he and a psychiatric team had escorted a heavily sedated Doctor Daystrom back to the space station. McCoy would return after he finished briefing the medical staff there. Kirk didn't expect him back for hours.

"Indeed, Captain?" Spock queried.

Kirk stopped walking. "Right after M-5 took over the ship and...killed Ensign O'Neill." He hesitated, remembering that horrifying moment when the M-5 had disintegrated the unsuspecting engineer. He shook it off. There was nothing to be done, now, except the paperwork and the letter to O'Neill's next of kin. "McCoy had a talk with Daystrom, then he came to me and floated the idea that Daystrom might have issues. I remember, he asked me 'where do you go from up?' He kind of danced around how Daystrom's early success and accolades might have affected him, and how he didn't view the M-5 rationally." Kirk snorted without humor. "I don't know if he realized at the time just how deep those issues ran. And now, here we are."

"Yes," Spock agreed slowly. "Doctor McCoy would understand such a dilemma, and undoubtedly be somewhat uncomfortable with it. He would have a certain insight into Doctor Daystrom's situation."

There was an undercurrent of meaning in Spock's voice that Kirk couldn't quite fathom. Kirk stopped walking and stared at his first officer. "Why do you say that?"

"It is a matter of public record," Spock said mysteriously. "And was, in fact, a cause of some celebrity for Doctor McCoy in the medical field. I suggest you review the good doctor's records from before he joined Starfleet, particularly the year 2253."

"You're not just going to tell me?"

"I confess I am surprised that you do not already know," Spock said with an arched brow. "Although you possibly did know at one time. In any case, I would not wish to invite the doctor's ire in this matter, Captain. It's best for you to discover, or re-discover, this information for yourself."

"Huh," said Kirk. So, McCoy had done something in 2253, something that Spock believed gave him an advantage in understanding Daystrom's slow breakdown. Spock had an interesting look on his face. Whatever was in McCoy's past couldn't be anything terrible, or Spock would have overcome his inhibitions and just blurted it out.

Kirk's curiosity was piqued. "You know, Spock, when you get like this, I can really sympathize with Bones' irritation with you."

"Like this, Captain?"

Kirk folded his arms across his chest. "Inscrutable, mysterious, and uninformative, Mister Spock. Unexplained hints and insinuations can generate great aggravation in humans, as I'm sure you know."

Spock merely nodded and said, "This is a matter you should discuss with the doctor yourself. I must begin preparing for the crew's return to the ship now. If you will excuse me, Captain?"

With that, Spock walked the rest of the way to the turbolift, leaving a rabidly curious captain staring after him.

No doubt just as he'd intended, Kirk decided, and headed purposefully for his office.


	3. Chapter 3

McCoy's past made for interesting reading. Especially the year 2253. Kirk now understood exactly what Spock had been getting at.

In 2253, in the first decade of his professional career, McCoy had developed a revolutionary neural grafting procedure. A procedure that was standard now, and looked to be for the foreseeable future.

"Developed a neural grafting procedure employing the creation of axonal pathways between the graft and a subject basal ganglia," Kirk read aloud for the third time. Verbalization didn't help; the string of medical jargon didn't mean a damn thing to him. But whatever this procedure was, it had won McCoy significant acclaim in medicine and several prestigious awards. He was the same kind of prodigy as Daystrom.

"Simple, old-fashioned country doctor, my ass," Kirk murmured, not for the first time since he'd met Leonard McCoy. He knew that was just McCoy's professional persona, a façade he assumed to put patients at ease, or to confuse a foe into underestimating him. Despite his protestations to the contrary, McCoy had always been a high-powered, highly skilled surgeon, technologist, and researcher. That was obvious from his achievements on the Enterprise, but it was interesting to read that it had been true from the beginning of his medical career.

McCoy had been relatively new to his surgical career when he'd developed this revolutionary procedure. Kirk knew that McCoy had been considered young by the standards of the medical profession. Not as young as Daystrom when he'd made his breakthroughs in duotronics, but Spock seemed to consider it a comparable achievement.

Kirk almost groaned aloud. To think, just the other day he'd lectured McCoy about how genius worked, and McCoy had just let it wash over him. Damn, how embarrassing...

Spock was right about something else, too. Kirk had already known all this about McCoy, or at least read it all before. He'd reviewed this very file when McCoy had first been assigned as the Enterprise's CMO, but that had been almost two years ago. And McCoy rarely talked about events in his past, good or bad. It was interesting that Spock had made the connection, but then Spock had a remarkable eidetic memory and probably remembered every crewman's file he'd ever read. Kirk didn't have such a good memory, although at times like this he wished he did.

Kirk didn't think McCoy had that "boy genius" chip on his shoulder: the issues, insecurities, and obsessive desire to "prove it wasn't just a fluke" that had driven Daystrom over the edge. McCoy had the self awareness to avoid falling into that kind of trap. Sometimes Kirk thought he had too much self awareness, but in this case it was probably a blessing.

Too much unrelieved introspection could also be a curse. Kirk understood that fact of life very well. Maybe McCoy could use a friendly ear for whatever he might need to get off his chest. He'd done it for Kirk often enough. Kirk wanted to return the favor.

Then again, trying to get McCoy to open up about anything was like pulling teeth without anesthetic. Chances were good that he'd clam up even tighter than...well, even tighter than Spock. At the very least, he'd probably deny that anything about the Daystrom mess had affected him personally.

Kirk supposed he could always threaten to sic Spock on the good doctor. That might do the trick.


	4. Chapter 4

McCoy didn't return until noon the next day. Kirk gave him until fifteen hundred, ship's time. He stood outside McCoy's cabin door, holding a case containing two snifters and a bottle of decidedly non-regulation Saurian brandy. McCoy had done this exact same thing earlier, when he'd come to console his captain after Wesley's "Captain Dunsel" crack. He'd provided a similar liquid remedy, as well; the universal panacea for Starship captains and CMOs.

The big difference now, of course, was that McCoy had brazenly barged in where angels would have feared to tread, while Kirk was having trouble just making himself press the door buzzer.

Coward, he told himself. How did McCoy do it? Kirk always felt uncomfortable and awkward when he found himself in these kinds of situations. He wasn't much of a counselor, and here he was about to inflict the touchy-feely "How are you doing? Want to talk about it?" conversation on the man who usually counseled him and the rest of the crew.

Interesting, that. Who counsels the counselor?

The captain, obviously. Kirk pushed the buzzer.

There was a pause, then a very tired "Come" responded. Even muffled through the door, McCoy sounded exhausted. Kirk frowned, but entered the cabin.

It was dark inside. "Lights, full," Kirk called, and the room brightened. Still in his uniform, McCoy was lying on his bunk, stretched out flat on his back with one arm thrown over his eyes.

The doctor groaned and complained, "Ye gods, Jim, don't you ever sleep?"

"It's the middle of the day shift," Kirk returned mildly.

"No consideration at all. Do you have any idea how long I've been forced to stay conscious?"

"Why'd it take so long, anyway? Just to get Daystrom transferred?"

"No," McCoy said. He hadn't bothered to get up or to remove his arm from his face. "Starfleet Security also grabbed me for a debriefing about that godforsaken debacle with the M5. That took hours. And those charming souls left me with the promise of more to come." His voice was heavy with irony.

Kirk felt a twinge of guilt. McCoy had gotten even less rest than he'd realized since Daystrom'd had his breakdown. "Yes," he said. "They're getting to everyone who was on board during that catastrophe pretty quickly. I had my first debriefing early this morning. The process is going to take some time. I'm afraid we're going to be here for a while."

"A lot of people died, Jim," McCoy pointed out unnecessarily.

Kirk stole a quick glance at him. He sounded terrible, his voice filled with regret, anger, frustration, bone-deep weariness–a whole gamut of negative emotions. Kirk pushed away his sense of guilt at interrupting McCoy's overdue rest break. McCoy clearly needed a drink–maybe more than one–and a venting session more than he needed a nap. This was for his own good.

Deliberately, Kirk walked over to the desk, opened up the case, and set out the glasses and brandy bottle.

McCoy sighed and finally sat up. He looked only mildly interested. "What's that for, Jim?"

"You."

"Me?"

"I think maybe you need a little something."

"You've got that backwards. I'm not the one Starfleet tried to replace with a machine."

"But they didn't replace me. And they clearly won't for the foreseeable future."

"Maybe even the unforeseeable future," McCoy agreed. "So if you're not upset, why the liquid anesthetic?"

"What with the Daystrom situation, I figured you needed to talk. And sometimes," Kirk said, unknowingly paraphrasing something another ship's surgeon had once said to an Enterprise captain, "a doctor will tell his bartender things he'd never tell his captain." He poured out two glasses of brandy, crossed the room and handed one to McCoy. "Not as potent as one of your Finagle's Follies, but hopefully just as therapeutic."

"I think you've got your wires crossed somewhere," McCoy said, mystified. "I really don't know what you're getting at."

"You and Daystrom," Kirk said. "Or rather, the similarities in your professional histories."

"Now you've really lost me." But Kirk thought that maybe he looked just a little bit wary.

Deceptively casual, Kirk said, "It must've been pretty rough watching Daystrom fall apart. Analyzing him, and seeing how you yourself might have turned out, if things had been a little different."

McCoy stared into the glass in his hand. He said quietly, "You're crossing a line, Jim."

"I know." Kirk shrugged helplessly. He pulled up a chair across from McCoy. "But if friends can't cross those kinds of lines, who can?"

"When did you figure this out?"

"I'm embarrassed to admit I didn't. Spock did."

McCoy raised his brows. "Oh?"

"He was of the opinion that you had considerable insight into Daystrom's situation. He told me to review your record, especially the year 2253. I found out Daystrom wasn't the only boy genius aboard."

"God, I hate that term." McCoy took a swig from his glass and gave a self-deprecating snort. He swirled his remaining brandy, regarding it absently. "That Vulcan is a nosy, pain-in-the-ass busybody."

"He's your friend, too."

McCoy crossed his legs and, surprisingly, relaxed. "Well, at least now I know what this is all about," he drawled. "You two are fretting about nothing."

"Hardly nothing, Bones," Kirk said gently. "That neural grafting procedure–from everything I read, it's still a big deal."

"This is nothing to worry about," McCoy insisted. "That was a long time ago. You don't really think I've spent my life obsessed with the past like Daystrom, do you?"

"I didn't say that. Obviously you haven't. But I wondered if maybe this whole experience didn't open up some old wounds. Looking back on it, it was scary the way you understood exactly what was driving him before his actual breakdown."

"Look, Jim–"

"Are you going to keep stalling, or are you going to tell me about it?"

"There's really nothing to tell."

Kirk leaned back in his chair and regarded his friend with exasperation. He'd been right, this was like pulling teeth. Without anesthetic. For himself. "You once told me that Spock was as tight-lipped as an Aldebaran shellmouth. I think that's an even better description of you. I know more about Spock's past than I do about yours, and that's saying something."

"You only know about Spock's past because he didn't have any control over how it all came out," McCoy snapped back. When Kirk just stared at him, he growled, "Fine. You want to hear it? Yes, I recognized what was eating at him and what was causing his problems. Daystrom stayed in the same line of research and spent his life trying to top what he'd done before. I didn't. I knew back then I didn't want to spend my life giving lectures and trying to recapture past glory. So instead of continuing with the same work, I took a different career turn and that's why I'm not neurotic like him."

"Just neurotic in your own inestimable way."

"Can't do anything about that."

Kirk took a sip of brandy to hide his smile. He should have taken a page from Spock's book right from the beginning of this little tête-à-tête he'd forced on Bones. Goading got results that sympathy didn't. And an unfavorable comparison to Spock was surely the ultimate goad. "So no old wounds at all?"

McCoy sighed. "I'd be lying if I said that I hadn't thought about it. 'There but for the grace of God go I,' and all that. But even back then, I knew I couldn't top myself in neural research. Oh, sure, all the kudos and grants were fun for a while, but after a couple years I finally saw where it was leading. If I'd let it go on, I would have been stuck in retread mode forever."

"Just like Daystrom," Kirk said.

"Yeah, like that. I wasn't going to let that happen to myself. So I found new mountains to climb instead." He raised his glass in a mock toast. "Here's to outer space. May it never get dull."

"An unlikely prospect," Kirk said, clinking his glass with McCoy's. "So you decided to go space adventuring?"

"I wouldn't put it that way..."

"I would." Kirk hesitated, then said, "I always thought you joined the Service for, um, reasons of a more personal nature." He kept the mention of McCoy's divorce oblique, although the doctor had intimated before that that was the reason he'd signed on with Starfleet so many years ago.

McCoy wrapped both hands around his glass and stared at the amber liquid. "Yes, well, that's true. You might say there was a perfect storm in my life at just the right time. Or the wrong time. Depends on your point of view."

"Hmmm," said Kirk.

"A new career direction didn't necessarily mean Starfleet, you know," McCoy said, a little irritably. "There were a lot of different options I considered pursuing; space medicine was just one of many possibilities–and pretty far down on the list, at that. But then when everything else went to hell..." he licked his lips and moved on quickly, "Well, Starfleet just seemed like the best solution available at the time."

"As far as I'm concerned," Kirk said sincerely, "it was the best possible decision you could have made."

"Thanks, Jim."

"No regrets?"

"This is really bugging you, isn't it?" McCoy looked at him clinically.

Kirk knew that look. "Don't try to make this about me. It's about you."

"I don't do me very often."

"I know. Are you going to answer the question?"

"You're pushing pretty hard, Jim. Psychology isn't your forte. Don't give up your day job." At Kirk's silence, McCoy sighed. "Do I have regrets about signing up? You've got to be kidding." Then he grinned. "Sometimes I absolutely hate being out in space. The things we run into–there are times when I've never felt so ineffectual and incompetent."

"Well, Bones, you just got through telling me you were after new challenges. I'd say you got them."

"And then some," McCoy agreed a little ruefully. "It can be pretty humbling. But I gotta tell you, I'm never bored. And I never, ever have to resort to recapturing old glory to fill my life, not when there are so many surprises constantly smacking me in the face. There are a million new things to investigate, and only one lifetime to cram them all in."

"I think I understand," Kirk said. "I can't imagine doing anything else, but then every day is a new adventure. I don't need to consider doing anything else."

"I can't imagine being anything but a doctor, either."

"It's an amazing life we've got, with such infinite variety no matter what our specialities."

"Not to mention infinite adversaries, like Klingons, Romulans, Orions, and Vulcans."

"Vulcans, too?" Kirk teased.

"Especially Vulcans, bless their pointed ears," McCoy said amiably. "Another reason why I'm never bored. So you can tell Spock to stop worrying that I'm gonna pull a Daystrom on you two."

"Spock will be relieved to hear it," Kirk said with a small smile. "His captain is as well. Neither of us was really concerned about that, you know. Just that you might be feeling, well, like you needed to talk a few things out."

"I rarely need to," McCoy stated. "That's not who I am."

"And yet you inflict it on me so often."

"That's part of my job description. Someone's got to keep you sane, and you do need it."

Kirk couldn't deny that. Talking over his problems with McCoy always helped him see things more clearly. He found it hard to believe that McCoy might not reap the same benefits, yet here he was denying it. "But now that you have talked it over?" Kirk pressed him. "Do you feel better?"

"Not really. But as long as the captain feels better, this chat has accomplished its purpose."

Kirk snorted. "So let me get this straight. You consider a conversation about your past to be therapeutic for me? You don't think it did you any good at all?"

"Jim, dredging up the past is never good for me. I'm just not wired that way. However, since it seems to have set the captain's mind at rest I consider it time well spent and misery well endured."

Kirk chuckled at that. It figured that McCoy had turned this conversation back onto him. He considered calling the doctor on his tactics, then decided to just give in gracefully. Raising his glass in another toast, he said in an arch tone, "Well then, here's to shared misery."

"Amen," said McCoy.

And they both finished their brandy.

**~ end ~**

_August, 2010_


End file.
